WASHINGTON -
October 24 - Despite government commitments to address the problem, food
recalls are on the rise and our food safety systems are broken, according to a
new report by U.S. PIRG. Contaminated food makes 48 million Americans sick
every year and costs over $77 billion in aggregated economic costs. In the USA
over the last 21 months, 1753 people were made sick from foodborne illnesses
linked directly to food recalls and the cost was over $227 million.

“Every year we
see hundreds of food products recalled, because they have caused sickness and
in some cases death. 2012 has already seen nearly twice as many illnesses due
to recalls as 2011, with high-profile recalls of cantaloupes and hundreds of
thousands of jars of peanut butter,” said Nasima Hossain, Public Health
Advocate for U.S. PIRG. “More needs to be done to identify the contaminants
that are making us sick and to protect Americans from the risk of unsafe food.”

The report,
“Total Food Recall: Unsafe Foods Putting American Lives at Risk,” analyzed
nationwide recall information issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
and the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) from January 2011 to September
2012. During that period, there were:

1,753
foodborne Illnesses directly linked to recalls of food products from known
pathogens such as Listeria and Salmonella;

37 deaths
directly linked to recalls of food products; and

$227 million
in economic and health related costs linked to recalls of food products.

The Food Safety
Modernization Act was signed into law by President Obama in January 2011, with
strong support from U.S.PIRG, consumer groups and public health groups. The law
was designed to give the FDA new tools and new powers to protect consumers.
However, the Act is still not being fully implemented and our foods remain
unsafe.

“We need a food
safety system that is fully funded and fully staffed so it can stop unsafe food
from reaching our dinner tables,” said Nasima Hossain. “We must move away from
the current reactive approach, where recalls happen after dangerous products
have already made it into families’ kitchens, and focus on prevention. The Food
Safety Modernization Act should be fully implemented and the Administration
should not waste any more time in strengthening our food safety systems.”

U.S. PIRG, the
federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), stands up to
powerful special interests on behalf of the American public, working to win
concrete results for our health and our well-being. With a strong network of
researchers, advocates, organizers and students in state capitols across the
country, we take on the special interests on issues, such as product
safety,political corruption, prescription drugs and voting rights,where these
interests stand in the way of reform and progress.

Separate Ruling Leaves Door Ajar for GE Crops on Midwestern
Refuges for Now

WASHINGTON - October
24 - A federal court ruled in favor of the public interest groups Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Center for Food Safety (CFS)
and Beyond Pesticides yesterday, halting cultivation of genetically engineered
(GE) crops in all national wildlife refuges in the Southeastern U.S. The ruling
is the third in a series of victories against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife
Service (FWS) resulting in the removal of GE cultivation from federal wildlife
preserves. In March 2009, the same groups won a similar lawsuit against GE
plantings on Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge. In 2011, the groups forced a
legal settlement ending GE planting on refuges throughout the 12-state
northeast region.

This latest ruling
bars FWS from entering into cooperative farming agreements for GE crops on the
128 refuges across eight states, including the 25 refuges currently growing GE
crops, without the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy
Act and refuge management laws. The requirement of environmental reviews will
likely prevent the planting of crops in 2013 and 2014, and may result in a
permanent end to the practice, as native successional grasses reclaim fallow
refuge tracts.

Federal district court
in the District of Columbia will hear arguments on November 5th on additional
remedies that may be required to mitigate environmental damage on the Southeast
refuges from GE crops already planted, including such measures as a ban on pesticide
spraying, enlarged buffers, and steps to prevent trans-genetic contamination.
FWS had unsuccessfully tried to argue the suit was moot because the planting
season was over and the agency foresaw no new illegal plantings.

“While we are happy
with the result we are disappointed that the government needlessly prolonged
this litigation,” stated PEER Counsel Kathryn Douglass, noting that the
government had tacitly conceded the merits of the suit in its court filing last
spring. “The simple point we are making in case after case is that genetically
modified crops have no legitimate role on a national wildlife refuge.”

In a ruling on October
15 this year, the same federal district judge, James Boasberg, ruled that the
FWS Environmental Assessment (EA) for GE planting in the Midwest region was
adequate. The ultimate meaning of that ruling is less clear due to facts that:

·FWS proposed GE
planting be phased out after five years;

·GE planting is limited
to the narrow purpose of transitioning former cropland purchased for refuge
additions into successions of natural grasses; and

·The programmatic
nature of the Midwest EA may require a new environmental review for each refuge
contemplating any GE agriculture.

“How GE crops can be
judged to carry significant environmental impacts in the Southeast and not in
the Midwest is difficult to understand and accept,” said Paige Tomaselli, staff
attorney with the Center for Food Safety. “However, short of a much-needed
nationwide settlement, this is good news in our fight to end the growing of GE
crops on our nation’s wildlife refuges.”

While national
wildlife refuges have allowed farming for decades, the practice is losing
support among refuge managers, especially since some crops, such as soybeans
and corn, are available mainly in GE strains. Refuge policy states that GE
crops should not be used except when essential to accomplish a refuge purpose –
a test that is extremely difficult to honestly meet. The lawsuits stress that
the GE crops actually conflict with the protection of wildlife, the main
purpose of the refuges. GE crops also require more frequent and increased
applications of toxic herbicides, which has fostered an epidemic of “super
weeds” as weeds have mutated. In addition, GE farming has led to uncontrolled
spread of the engineered DNA to conventional, organic crops and wild relatives,
in effect contaminating the wild from federal wildlife preserves.

###

Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is a national
alliance of local state and federal resource professionals. PEER's
environmental work is solely directed by the needs of its members. As a
consequence, we have the distinct honor of serving resource professionals who
daily cast profiles in courage in cubicles across the country.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Monsanto's Lies and the GMO Labeling Battle

You may have never heard of Henry I. Miller, but right now he is attempting
to determine the future of food in this country. And he has enormous financial
backing.Mr. Miller is the primary face and voice of the “No on Prop 37” campaign in
California. At this very moment, Monsanto and other pesticide companies are
spending more than $1 million a day to convince California voters that it’s not
in their best interest to know whether the food they eat is genetically
engineered. And Henry I. Miller is their guy.

If you live in California today, he’s hard to miss.
You see him in TV ads, hear him in radio spots, and his face is all over the
expensive fliers that keep showing up uninvited in your mail box. Initially,
the ads presented Miller as a Stanford doctor. But he isn’t. He’s a research
fellow at a conservative think tank (the Hoover Institute) that has offices on
the Stanford campus. When this deceptive tactic came to light, the ads were pulled and then redone. But they still feature
Miller trying to convince the public that Prop 37 “makes no sense,” and that
it’s a “food-labeling scheme written by trial lawyers who hope for a windfall if
it becomes law.”

Actually, Prop 37 makes all the sense in the world if you want to know what’s
in the food you eat. It was written by public health advocates, and provides no
economic incentives for filing lawsuits.Who, then, is Henry I. Miller, and why should we believe him when he tells us
that genetically engineered foods are perfectly safe?

Now he’s telling us that we should vote No on 37
because, he says, the labeling law contains exemptions included “for special
interests.” As if the corporations he fronts for weren’t the biggest “special
interests” of all. And by the way, the exemptions in Prop 37 conform to those found in GMO labeling
laws in the 61 other nations around the world, including the European Union,
that already require labeling for foods that are genetically engineered.

Miller and the No on 37 campaign say that labeling
would increase family food bills by hundreds of dollars per year.
Interestingly, the study they cite to justify this claim was paid for by the No
on 37 campaign itself. It was the work of a Maine public relations firm,
Northbridge Consulting, that has no economic expertise, but has worked on behalf
of Coke and Pepsi against laws that would require the recycling of soda pop
bottles.

Somehow I keep getting the feeling that Henry Miller may not be the man you
want to listen to when your health is at stake. But Monsanto and its allies are
seeing to it that this man’s face and beliefs are everywhere in California
today. One television viewer in San Francisco reported seeing ads featuring
Miller no less than 12 times in a single day.

Not content with misrepresenting Stanford University
(three
times), the pesticide and junk food companies behind No on 37 have also:

Misled voters in the state voter guide by claiming falsely that the world’s largest organization of food
and nutrition professionals, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, believes
GMO foods are safe.

Regrettably, this deluge of deception seems to be having an impact. Although
polls originally showed that more than 80% of the California public want
genetically modified food to be labeled, more recent polls are showing a virtual
dead heat on Prop 37, with the advertising deluge only increasing in
intensity.

Some daily newspapers in California are contributing
to this unhappy trend by coming out against Prop 37, with editorials that use
entire paragraphs directly from the “No on 37” press releases. Might this have
anything to do with the fact that processed foods companies are the primary
source of advertising revenue for newspapers today? And that the lobby for the
processed food companies, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, has called the
defeat of Prop 37 its single highest priority for the year?

The famed food author Michael Pollan wrote recently that Proposition 37 is the
litmus test for whether or not there is actually a food movement in this
country. Public health activist Stacy Malkan
adds that it also may be the litmus test for whether there is democracy left
in this country.

These are good points. There is no food movement if Monsanto has its way
with us. And there is no democracy without an informed citizenry.The question now is whether we are going to allow special interests to
dictate what we are allowed to know about the food they sell us.In this case, ignorance is not bliss. It’s subservience to the agenda of
Monsanto and the other pesticide companies. Without labeling, we are eating in
the dark, with potentially disastrous consequences.What remains to be seen is whether Californians will, come November 6th,
allow Monsanto and its allies to control what you are allowed to know about the
food you eat.

John Robbins is cofounder of the Food Revolution Network,
which provides information and inspiration to help you heal your body and your
world with food. He is the author of many bestsellers, including The Food Revolution, No Happy Cows, and Diet For A New America. He is also the recipient of the
Rachel Carson Award, the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award, the Peace Abbey’s
Courage of Conscience Award, Green America’s Lifetime Achievement Award and many
other accolades.

Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over
University Agricultural Research

New report outlines how corporate influence compromises the mission of
land-grant universities

April 26th, 2012.Washington, D.C.— From domestication of the blueberry to tools to combat soil
erosion, land-grant universities have revolutionized American agriculture for
general public benefit almost entirely through public investments from state and
federal governments. However, a report
released by Food & Water Watch today finds that by 2010, nearly a quarter of
funding for agricultural research at land-grant universities came from private
and corporate donations.“The original intent that public research should benefit the public has been
completely lost and this conflict of interest between public good and private
profits remains largely unchallenged by both academia and policymakers,” said
Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. “Sound
agricultural policy requires impartial and unbiased scientific inquiry, but like
nearly every aspect of our modern food system, land-grant school funding has
been overrun by narrow private interests.”Created by the federal government in 1862, land-grant universities have
pioneered vitally important research on plant varieties, soil conservation,
advancing rural livelihoods and improving the safety and abundance of food for
consumers. The land-grant university system has 109 locations and a presence in
every state and territory. It includes some of the largest state universities
such as the University of California system, Pennsylvania State University and
Texas A&M University.The report, Public
Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over University Agricultural
Research, provides a history of the land-grant university
system including how, as public funding has stalled in recent decades, these
universities have turned to agribusiness to fill the void, compromising the
public mission of the institutions.“Private-sector funding not only corrupts the public research mission of
land-grant universities, but also distorts the science that is supposed to help
farmers improve their practices and livelihoods,” said Hauter. “Industry-funded
academic research routinely produces favorable results for industry sponsors.
And since policymakers and regulators frequently cite these university studies
to back up their decision-making, industry-funded academic research increasingly
influences the rules that govern their business operations.”The report outlines the millions of dollars that land-grant universities and
professors have received from corporate funders and gives examples of the
unencumbered access and influence corporations such as Walmart, Monsanto,
Cargill, Tyson, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s have received in return. To conclude,
the report make several recommendations for ways public agricultural research
should be reoriented to serve the common good, including a call for more
transparency and using the Farm Bill to direct research funding toward more
practical solutions to the day-to-day problems facing farmers.“If an entire wing of a university department’s building is named after
Monsanto, as it is at Iowa State University, can we really expect that school to
produce objective, potentially critical, research on genetically engineered
foods or the environmental impact of commodity crops?” asked Hauter. “Just as
Congress created this beneficial system 150 years ago, Congress must
reprioritize public funding so that land-grant universities can pursue their
intended goal of researching some of the most troubling problems that plague our
food system, economy and public health.”Public Research, Private Gain: Corporate Influence Over
University Agricultural Researchcan be downloaded here: http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/public-research-private-gain/Contact: Anna Ghosh, 415-293-9905,
aghosh(at)fwwatch(dot)org

Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is
safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat
and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep
clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the
environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting
citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under
public control.

Of Course Monsanto Says It’s Safe

If you’ve been paying attention to the news about
food lately, you’ve probably read about the now infamous “Seralini
study,” in which University of Caen (France) molecular biologist Gilles-Eric
Seralini demonstrated major health issues associated with eating Monsanto’s
genetically engineered (GE) corn and the herbicide used in conjunction with it,
RoundUp.

Widely covered by the media, most reports have tried
to portray Seralini as a strident, ideologically
driven researcher who willfully designed a study to produce
a result showing that GE food is bad. Many science journalists criticized
Seralini for having an anti-GE bias, for taking research money from a foundation
that is anti-GE, and for not disclosing every piece of data to the public.

But this attack coverage seems grossly disproportionate given the realities
around funding and bias in agricultural research. Science journalists seldom, if
ever, cover the opposite angle: that industry has funded much of the scientific
literature we have about the safety of GE foods. These industry-funded studies
aren’t science as much as they are public relations, always concluding that GE
is safe and good. And in our broken regulatory system for these controversial
new foods, these industry studies are also what regulators use to approve new
genetically engineered crops for our food supply.

Indeed, the strain of corn that Seralini studied,
NK603, has been shown in the scientific literature to be safe—in studies done by
Monsanto. The company has produced at least seven studies about NK603 – all of
them positive – in four peer-reviewed journals.More shocking, at
least three of these peer-reviewed journals openly advertise their corporate
sponsors from the food industry, like Archer Daniel Midlands and
Pioneer.One of these, the Journal of Animal Science is run by the
American Society of Animal Science, which counts biotech companies BASF
and Monsanto, as gold
and silver sponsors. Most of the Monsanto studies include
co-authors from public universities, whose names add credibility.

Does anyone honestly think that Monsanto is going to fund research about its
products that casts them in an unfavorable light, then publish these findings in
a journal over which it has financial influence for all to see?

Troublingly, industry is now paying hundreds
of millions of dollars to fund research at public universities. Food &
Water Watch explored the distorting and corrupting effect that corporate money,
finding that some departments take upwards of 40 percent of the research grant
money while some individual professors take 75 percent or more. This funding –
along with the promise of future funding or the threat of losing it – reliably
produces academic research that is favorable to
industry sponsors. It also produces a widespread perception that because the
scientific literature on GE is overwhelmingly positive, that the science is
comprehensive and the consensus on GE safety is clear.

The reality is, there is little funding for
independent research that challenges the industrial model of agriculture,
including issues like the safety of GE. This is why Seralini’s study is both
extremely rare and extremely important. Even government agencies, when they make
regulatory decisions about GE foods, do little more than rubber
stamp industry-funded science.

Seralini’s research funding came from the apt-named Committee for Independent
Research and Information on Genetic Engineering, which has been vilified as
anti-GE.

Whether this group is or isn’t anti-GE, the truth is
they are filling a vital gap in research funding around the safety of GE foods,
and we should take their results at least as seriously as Monsanto’s. Two groups
of scientists have come out in
defense of Seralini’s research, fighting off industry-lead criticism. And
the findings from Seralini’s study show that there is much more work to be done
to investigate all of the potential health effects of eating GE food.

The status quo of industry influence over agricultural science means that
NK603 remains a pervasive ingredient in our food system – apparently
unchallengeable by scientists, unexamined by journalists and unavoidable by
consumers because GE foods are unlabeled.

At the same time that Monsanto and friends are
trying desperately to discredit the small amount of research being done to see
if GE foods are safe to eat, they are also fighting to prevent U.S. consumers
from knowing if we are eating them. Learn
more about the fight to require labeling of GE foods across the country and
the heated battle raging in California over Prop
37, the ballot initiative to label GE foods.

Tim Schwab is a food researcher at Food and Water Watch. With a background in
journalism, Tim worked as a reporter and as a researcher on a variety of
projects before joining Food and Water Watch. He has a master’s degree in
journalism from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He can be
reached at tschwab(at)fwwatch(dot)org.SOURCE: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/22-2

WASHINGTON - October 22, 2012 - The Future of Food: 2050 is the
marquee national conference for Food Day, the nationwide celebration and
movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. The conference will
convene top food movement thought leaders to share their predictions on the
future of the American food system. Hosted by Representative Chellie Pingree and
with welcoming remarks by Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of the Center
for Science in the Public Interest and founder of Food Day, the conference will
include a panel on diet and food moderated by April Fulton of NPR and a panel on
agriculture led by food writer Jane Black.

Who: Speakers include Eric Meade of the Institute for
Alternative Futures; Andrea Thomas, Senior VP for Sustainability at Walmart; Dr.
David Katz of Yale University Prevention Research Center; Catherine Badgley,
professor of sustainable agriculture at University of Michigan; A.G. Kawamura,
farmer and former California Secretary of Agriculture; and Danielle Nierenberg,
Director of the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet projectWhat: Panel discussions on diet and food, and
agricultureWhen:Wednesday, October 24, 2012 5:00 pm Reception at
the Caucus Room, Cannon House Office Building6:15 to 8:30 pm Conference
Program, Capitol Visitor CenterWhere: United States Capitol Visitor Center, Washington,
DCWhy: Food should be healthy, affordable, and produced with
care for farm animals, the environment, and the men and women who grow, harvest
and serve it. The Future of Food: 2050 will connect the Food Day priorities of
today with the improved food environment of the future.

Coordinated by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food
Day is led by a diverse advisory board of nutrition experts, policymakers,
public health advocates, and agricultural innovators. Food Day is a great
opportunity for the news media to cover food-related issues such as health,
sustainable agriculture, farmworker justice, and animal welfare.